U.S. 17 projects in Jones County funded

All the long-awaited bypasses and widening projects for U.S. 17 through Jones County are funded and work is scheduled to begin simultaneously in 2015.

“I can believe it because I’ve seen it in writing now,” Marc Finlayson, Highway 17 Association consultant, told the nearly 60 area business people attending a recent breakfast sponsored by Swiss Bear Development Corporation and New Bern Area Chamber of Commerce.

Finlayson said funding for those projects, totaling $225 million, got the blessing of the new administration in August when the N.C. Board of Transportation voted to accelerate all three so they will go ahead of the change in the state’s highway funding formula.

“DOT leadership agreed with us on the significance of this,” Finlayson said.

Some of those present at the New Bern Riverfront Convention Center breakfast included Swiss Bear Director Susan Moffat-Thomas and former, who is stepping down after two years as Swiss Bear president. The two have been pushing for widening U.S. 17 through the state for decades.

Chamber President Kevin Roberts said he read in old records from 1903 that a local representative mentioned the highway going north and south and said then “something’s got to be done.”

Leaders of the 13 counties from the Virginia to South Carolina state lines pushed for the needed improvements beginning in 1959 and incorporated the Highway 17 Association in 1975, but N.C. Board of Transportation member Bob Mattocks said it had little demonstrable success until it hired Finlayson in 2006.

Finlayson said that U.S. 17 is the only north-south corridor east of I-95 and, as a result, safety improvements and widening it can produce significant economic impact for the state and region.

An economic impact statement done for the highway shows that improvements would create positive impacts for all three of the state’s top money makers: agribusiness, military and tourism.

He said the nearly $450 million state investment needed for the unfunded projects in the study’s Plan A scenario would yield an estimated $2.168 billion in return and more than 1,000 new jobs — 2,024 when the road is created.

That is a 4.5 to 1 cost benefit ratio return on investment, Finlayson said.

Plan B and Plan C scenarios don’t match that cost return but still offer a better than 2.5 to 1 ratio, he said, and could produce an estimated 4,000 recurring jobs.

He said it remains unclear how the new state funding formula will affect unfunded U.S. 17 widening projects, which now divides the 30 percent of transportation funding allocations for the 14 divisions by population rather than road miles or economic impact value, he said.

“We’re going to have to work extra hard to tell our story,” Finlayson said. “I understand the metropolitan concerns,” he added, but all the state’s highways need to be maintained.